Flights

by Jim Shepard

  His mother said something.

  “Well, I got Al Greaves looking for me, for a dog. Something small, you know, and it won’t cost us anything, and I’ll make sure it’s not something that’s gonna take your hand off.”

  “You think it’s that simple?” His mother was closer now.

  “What do you want me to do? Hire a psychiatrist? Bring in a team from Yale?”

  “He’s unhappy about more than the dog and you know it.”

  “Well, let’s start small, all right? We’ll surprise him with the dog, and if he ends up strangling it then we’ll know what our next move should be.”

  Dishes collided and rattled.

  “Look, I’m not saying—” His father moved away, fading out under the clatter.

  He thought for a while about a dog. The image of Lady as a puppy returned to him. “Lady the second,” he said, standing and turning in to his bedroom. “I’ll probably kill her, too.”

  The Lirianos came over. He avoided Mickey and went outside and sat next to Louis, who was sitting alone at the redwood table as though it were summer.

  “Button your jacket, Louis,” he suggested.

  “Thanks.” He buttoned his jacket. His voice always seemed to have an odd extra bit of volume.

  “That was a great game last week,” Biddy said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Now all you gotta do is beat Milford.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  A leaf fell directly between them, resting on curved points on the table. “How come you’re out here?”

  Louis shrugged. “I’m tired. Came from practice.” He pulled up some grass and twiddled it between his fingers. Biddy felt sadder than ever.

  “You know,” Louis said, startling him, “we hate Prep.” There was a silence, and Biddy waited for him to continue. “They do terrible things. Last year in pileups they were pulling the hairs out of my legs.”

  Biddy sat forward. “The hairs out of your legs?”

  He nodded sadly. “You couldn’t see who was doing it, and everyone on top would hold you down.” There was an odd, rumbling sound from the airport. “It used to hurt,” he added.

  “I believe it,” Biddy said.

  “Darien was mean, too. They used to come in three buses. It was like an army, Coach said.”

  “How were they mean?”

  He shook his head vaguely. The tree branches above him moved in the wind, clacking like dice in a cup.

  “How have you been, Louis?” he asked after a while.

  “I’m okay. I hurt my hand in the game.” He looked at his hand.

  “No, I mean have you been happy and stuff?”

  “Yeah. I been happy.” He sounded flat.

  “You sound blah.”

  He nodded, undisturbed. “People say that.”

  Biddy leaned forward. “Louis, do you ever see yourself doing other things? Playing in other games? Like pro football?”

  “Oh, I’m not good enough for pro football.”

  “No, I mean imagine—like pretend you’re in a game. Or dream?”

  “Sometimes I have dreams.”

  Biddy slumped back.

  “Is that what you mean?”

  “No, not really.” A private plane droned by, banking around to its approach pattern. “What’s your favorite team?”

  “Football?” Louis said. “Browns.”

  “Okay, do you ever, like imagine you’re playing with the Browns?”

  Louis looked at him strangely. “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Biddy said, discouraged. “I thought you might.”

  “You should button your jacket,” Louis said, scolding.

  Biddy nodded, feeling the cold. “I know,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Laura wasn’t in school the next day. He sat under the tree anyway, by himself. Sister Theresa walked over and sat next to him.

  “Going to play today?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Across the yard, the ball was kicked back and forth.

  “I’m noticing a real change in attitude with you, Biddy,” she said. “What do you think?” She looked at him. “Feel any different?” She returned her attention to the game, her profile sharp and striking. “Like what happened yesterday. That surprised me. I wouldn’t’ve expected it of you. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that, but even so. Is anything bothering you you’d like to talk about?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You could talk to Father if you’d be more comfortable.”

  “No.”

  “What about your grades?”

  He gazed at the grass.

  “They’re not what anyone expects of you. You’re just getting by this year. And letting a lot of people down. A lot of it is carelessness. As you know.”

  He rubbed a hand on his shoe.

  “Is the work too hard? It’s not too hard for Janet. It’s not too hard for Sarah Alice. Laura was just dropped into a strange situation and she’s doing fine. Do you think you’re going to get honors every year for slapdash work?” She waited. “What are your parents going to say after this report card?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t know. You should know. Should I arrange a meeting with them? Do we need a meeting with them?”

  “No.”

  “Straighten up, Biddy. You’re a bright boy and you stay out of trouble. You’ve got a good future ahead if you work at it.” She stood, checking the back of her habit for grass. “I’m still assuming you’ll represent Our Lady of Peace in the spelling bee. With Sarah Alice and Janet.”

  He nodded.

  “It’s an honor, by the way,” she called back over her shoulder. “Let’s go. We’re going in now.” She gestured at the line of boys and girls in plaid and gray, fidgeting and jostling one another under the cool overcast sky.

  He took the pitch and sprinted wide, turning, twisting, darting, ripping away from people, making grunting, desperate noises in the exertion. He was upended finally and fumbled, landing on his shoulder. Someone tore his sleeve off.

  Bridgeport had returned for a rematch, and Biddy and the rest of Lordship were now back on defense.

  The fast kid was back, as well. He was wearing a shirt that said HELLO on the front. When he’d arrived Teddy had asked “What does that mean?” And he’d turned around to reveal a GOODBYE on the back.

  “Give it to me wide,” the fast kid said audibly in the huddle. “These kids suck.”

  They threw themselves at him when he took the pitch; threw themselves, arms and legs splayed out, hoping to hurt him, hoping to stop him, hoping at least to force him out of bounds. In the confusion and tangle of bodies they did.

  “Asshole,” he said, to no one in particular.

  The next time, he drove into them and kept going; the time after, he went around.

  Teddy stood up, brown grass hanging from his ear. “We’re gonna stop that kid and that play if it takes all night,” he said.

  Biddy sat panting on the ground, legs out, nearly heaving. He’d been kicked in the chest.

  Blair knelt over him. C’mon, man, he said. Let’s go.

  He looked up in wonder at the black face under the brilliant purple helmet. The lights around the stadium were utterly dazzling and he was blinded if he took his eyes from him.

  You can’t sit here, Blair said. There’s a football game goin’ on.

  And Biddy slowly got off the artificial surface, checking himself, straightening his face mask, shifting a pad. His hands were taped. He had purple wristbands. Brilliant purple and yellow stripes ran down the outsides of his thighs. His ears filled with people roaring his name, and the names of his teammates.

  Let’s go, Blair said, hustling back to his position, and the snap caught him unprepared as Stallworth came after him, and he fought him off and caught a glimpse of Franco Harris surging toward him, and he shucked Stallworth to see Harris’s onrushing helmet lowering, his eyes closing and his face screwing up in anticipation
of the impact, and Biddy drove into him and hung on, the fast kid jarring backward and twisting to get free, Teddy leaping on as the kid spun and fell.

  “Your nose is bleeding,” the kid said as he lined up and then went into his stance as Franco Harris, roaring forward toward Biddy like a black-and-yellow refrigerator coming down a flight of stairs, and Biddy cut and ducked in toward his knees, lowering a shoulder, and was knocked out of the way. He chased and dived, leaped and grabbed, sprinted and dug in, and sprawled, and when it was over he was left in the dried grass in the middle of the bluffs, holding his arm, staring into the gloom, grass in his hair, dried blood on his face, one sleeve missing, and both the fast kid and Franco Harris gone.

  “You know, you really are crazy,” Teddy said, hunched next to him. “You know that?”

  “I know it,” Biddy said. “Now all I gotta do is do something about it.”

  Punting

  Biddy is a wonderful boy. Kristi has her moments, too. I’m not going to pretend we’ve had nothing but trouble from them, because we haven’t. I’m not trying to make us into martyrs. God knows we don’t qualify. It’s just that most of the time people seem to wonder what I’m worrying about. What’s wrong with Judy? Why can’t she leave well enough alone?

  What am I supposed to tell them? How long do you have to be around Biddy to know there’s something wrong, there’s something he’s keeping inside of him? How long can you ignore what Kristi does or write her off as still too young to know what she’s doing?

  My husband doesn’t agree. We’re fine, the kids are fine, and we don’t need to talk to anybody about anybody. It’s not surprising, really: if we don’t talk to each other, why should he be willing to talk to strangers?

  Whether it’s the kids’ behavior or a new addition, I’m always pushing, he says. Always after something. Never satisfied. He says the kids learned how to sulk watching me. And what seems so awful, especially when I know the kids are hurting and we’re not helping them, is that every so often I think he may be right.

  “My story’s called ‘The Girl Who Interrups,’” Kristi said. “You wanta hear it?”

  Biddy looked from the TV to the rain outside. “Sure.”

  “You can’t and watch TV at the same time.”

  “Yes, I can. Go ahead.”

  Kristi turned on the overhead light. “‘In my class I have a girl named Interruping Libby. She always interrups reading groups.’”

  “How did you spell ‘interrupts’?”

  “I-n-t-e-r-r-u-p-s.”

  “That’s wrong. There’s a ‘t’ at the end, too: p-t-s.”

  “‘Sometimes she even interrupts our silent period. I really do not like her. When my teacher is talking she says I want to talk to you so talk to me and not to her. Interrupting Libby always interrupts. People do not do that to her. My mother got fed up with her and sent my father to see her. He said she better stop that people are going to start hitting her in the mouth. So she didn’t interrupt anymore.’”

  “You made that last part up,” he said.

  “You like it?”

  “It’s better than your other one.”

  “I like it.”

  The back door opened. “From the beat, beat, beat, of the tomtoms,” his father sang. Biddy and Kristi went into the kitchen. Their father was dripping with rain, setting packages along the counter in a row.

  “Did a little shopping,” he said. “Got a little liquor, got a little mixer, got some rolls. You want a sandwich?”

  Biddy said no and Kristi returned to the TV.

  “Oh, and got a little this.” He handed a package to Biddy, who felt immediately the heft and shape of a big book.

  “What is it?” he said.

  His father shrugged. “Have to open it.”

  He tore at the wrapping, and underneath it said in big red letters The Lore of Flight.

  “God,” he said. “How’d you know I wanted it?”

  “Well, you asked me questions about Bill Carver’s plane until I thought I’d drop. This’s got all that stuff in there.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Never mind where I got it.” He opened it. “See? It’s got ‘Flying a Small Aircraft,’ ‘A Typical Flight,’ a section on weapons. … It’s interesting stuff.”

  Biddy closed it.

  “It’s a good book,” his father said. “It’s not cheap.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  His father smiled and went into the bedroom to hang up his jacket.

  “What’re you doing home?” Biddy called.

  “I just took off a little early. I’ll work on the cellar. You guys turned it into a real shithouse.”

  “What’d you get me?” Kristi called from the den.

  “Oh, Jesus.” His father came out of the bedroom and started down the cellar stairs.

  “Biddy gets everything.”

  “It was a book sale,” he called, his voice ringing hollow under the floor. “You want a book? You don’t read the ones you got now.”

  “I want a cat,” she said.

  “We’re not getting a cat.” There was the scraping sound of boxes being moved across concrete. “We can’t even take care of ourselves.”

  Biddy went into the den. His sister put both feet under a hassock from her perch on a chair and kicked upward violently, flipping it across the room and off the wall.

  “Jesus Christ!” his father yelled from below. “What’re you doing now?”

  No one said anything. There was an angry white mark on the paneling where the leg of the hassock had hit.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Kristi called. “The hassock fell over.” She looked back at the TV. “It falls over all the time.”

  Ronnie and Cindy sat opposite each other at the Lirianos’ kitchen table. There was a fruit dish with three pears between them. Biddy was waiting for Mickey, who couldn’t find his shoes. Ronnie was drinking anisette.

  “How about this,” Ronnie said. “‘Fair trial? Whaddaya mean, fair trial? If I get a fair trial, I’m dead. What I need is an unfair trial.’”

  “Oh,” Cindy said. “I know it’s George Raft, but I don’t know which movie.”

  Ronnie swirled his anisette. It left a clear film on the glass.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said.

  “That’s two in a row. Go ahead.”

  “Well, what movie was it from?”

  He wouldn’t tell her. “All right,” she said. “‘Dignity. Always dignity.’”

  “Gene Kelly. Singin’ in the Rain.”

  She made a face.

  “‘When you side with a man, you stick with him. Otherwise you’re no better than some animal.’”

  She played with a spoon. “I should know this,” she said.

  “You should. William Holden in The Wild Bunch.”

  “How do you play this?” Biddy asked.

  “Badly.” Cindy swept some hair behind her ear.

  “We’re trying to stump each other a certain amount of times,” Ronnie said.

  “‘She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes,’” Cindy said. “‘Haven’t you?’”

  Biddy lifted a salt shaker. “Who said that?” he asked.

  “Poor Norman.” Ronnie sat forward. “Anthony Perkins in Psycho.”

  “Rats,” Cindy said.

  “Might as well run up the white flag,” Ronnie suggested. “I think you’re in over your head here.”

  “Over my head. Listen to this nine-inch worm.”

  “Nine-inch worm?” Biddy said.

  “It’s a joke,” Ronnie said. “A filthy joke, I might add. Ms. Liriano here apparently designed and built the sewers of Paris.”

  Biddy sat back, lost.

  “What do you think, Biddy?” she said. “Why am I marrying this yim-yam? Do I have a soft spot in my heart for strays?”

  “The soft spot’s in your head,” Ronnie said.

  “Our first fight,” she said. S
he leaned closer to Biddy, conspiratorial. “Isn’t he a homely sucker, Biddy? Look at the face. Looks like a fist with eyes.”

  Ronnie laughed.

  “You’d better watch yourself,” she said. “I might come to my senses.”

  “I’m worried,” he said. He picked at a tooth. “Start something on the side with Biddy here.”

  Biddy shifted his weight in the chair, wondering where Mickey could possibly be. He said he’d see what was keeping him, and got out of the kitchen and took the stairs two at a time.

  Mickey was rummaging through his toy box.

  “Are you coming out?” Biddy said.

  “I don’t feel like it.” He didn’t look up.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t feel like it.” He looked at him. “Who asked you to come over anyway? Why don’t you go home or move away or something?” Biddy stood flatfooted, stunned. Mickey threw another toy in the box. “Jerk.”

  Page 279 of The Lore of Flight, “Flying a Small Aircraft”:

  In these days of swing-wing supersonics, jumbo jets and airline passengers by the millions, it is not generally realized that the great majority of aircraft are small and simple machines. For example, there are over 100,000 privately owned small aeroplanes in the United States, where they outnumber airliners about a hundred to one.

  He was taken back to the day he and Louis were caught by the yellow jeep near the runway: they had crept to the very edge of the reeds, lying on their bellies, the crushed straw warmer than the ground underneath, and had watched the private planes turn and wait for clearance, running the engines up, before accelerating down the tarmac away from them and lifting free into the air in the distance.

  They watched five aircraft go off like that in succession, plane after plane revving, vibrating, gathering power, it seemed, before the final release. Each one in succession turning to show its colors, broad stripes of red and blue and green, each one spellbinding him in turn, seducing him further from the reeds, blinding him until too late to the approach of the yellow security jeep in the periphery of his vision.

  He compared The Lore of Flight to an old Cessna manual Mr. Carver had given him after the flight to East Hampton. He reread “Flying a Small Aircraft,” comprehending bit by bit throttles, rudder bars, angles of attack, trim, and drag. He read about the tendency to yaw, and about stalling. He studied the Cessna specifications and the preflight checklist, reproduced in full. At the end of the chapter, in a red Magic Marker box, he outlined and highlighted: